Creating new development

Creating new development

Global network

Global network

Latest developments

Latest developments

This pilot Project could show how we can grow vegetables with less water or brackish water. I think this will not be important only to Qatar, but to the whole region and elsewhere where they have the same climate as Qatar. So, I have a lot of hope.

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, Prime Minister of Qatar

This is an example of the need for new and environmental friendly technologies to contribute to both increase the global production of food, but at the same time reduce the global emissions of greenhouse gasses.

Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway

This is a gold standard in a day and age where we have a hot and crowded planet, and we need to move towards a low
carbon future fast.

Olav Kjørven, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations Development Program

The Sahara Forest Project appears to be a very interesting example of the more integrated and holistic kind of thinking that we will need a lot more of in the future to make our energy, water and industrial systems more sustainable.

EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs

It deserves follow-up and attention from private investors, but certainly also partly a public funding system that makes it possible to move ahead.

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Special Envoy on Climate Change, former Prime Minister of Norway, former chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development and Director General of the World Health Organization

A novel combination of technologies that has the potential to turn large areas of desert green, producing commercial quantities of food and energy crops, fresh water, and electricity

Science

That Sahara Forest-thing just blows my mind!” (…) “Fantastic! This draws upon synergies from a range of different of technologies

Lord John Prescott, UK Former Deputy Prime Minister

SFP is a pioneering project that reflects the kind of holistic vision and solution that we need to explore so that we can address the interconnected challenges of food, water and energy security. It is about optimizing the whole system rather than maximizing one goal.

A renewable-energy “oasis” slated to be built in 2010 may serve as a proving ground for new technologies designed to bring green living to the desert.

National Geographic

A very spectacular and potentially important project on renewable energy, where we try to pool our experience in some adventurous and entrepreneurial approaches to exploring the potential of this country and the solar potential of the Middle Eastern region. Starting in Jordan is really a promising starting point.

Jonas Gahr Støre, Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs

A project at the forefront of cutting-edge technology.

José María Figueres Former President of Costa Rica, Initiator and president of The Global Observatory and Member of the Club of Madrid

Arnold Schwarzenegger stole the show for a while as a star speaker at COP15 (and confirmed that California is the best state in the world), but the Sahara Forest Project remains by far the most original initiative to combat climate change.

Gulf News

It is not just “carbon neutral” (Whatever that means) it is a restorative technology. And that is the heart of the vision which is so exciting about where technology and human systems could go next; a step change which would make industrial, mechanistic models look crude, compared to the elegance of partnering with nature to meet our needs, with a fraction of the effort (and the damage).

John Grant in the book “Co-opportunity – Join up for a sustainable, resilient, prosperous world”

Projects like this, like the Sahara Forest Project, combine a number of challenges into a solution, and we know that many big companies and investors are increasingly interested in projects like this, because they want to be investing in opportunities of the future.

Paul Simpson, COO of CDP Water Disclosure. Board member of Ethical Investment Research Service (EIRIS) and former Director of the Social Venture Network

The Sahara Forest Project proposes building CSP plants below sea level (the Sahara has several such depressions) so that seawater can flow into them and be condensed into distilled water for powering turbines and washing dust off the mirrors.

TIME Magazine

The idea sounds too good to be true: vast greenhouses-cum-power-plants that sit in the desert, producing food, energy and fresh water. Yet that is the proposed design for the Sahara Forest Project.

Telegraph

Seawater greenhouses to bring life to the desert. The planned project would use solar power to evaporate salt water, generating cool air and pure water thereby allowing food to be grown.

Guardian

Sahara Forest Project is an ambitious attempt to use concentrated solar power and seawater-cooled greenhouses to produce renewable energy, crops and water. Its success thus far has inspired new feasibility studies in Jordan and Qatar.

The Economist

Surely this is a perfect example of the potential power of human and technological collaboration.” “It is a bold and ambitious plan that, if realized, could have a powerful positive impact not only for the Sahara region, but also for Europe and the rest of the world.

Trehugger

Individually, the various technologies are commercially proved, but excitement stems from using them together for the first time.

Financial Times

Greening the desert

A short introduction to the Sahara Forest Project and its ambitious goal to bring the green to the desert

The production of key resources, such as clean water, clean energy and a sustainable production of food represents some of our time’s greatest challenges. The Sahara Forest Project is a new environmental solution to create re-vegetation and green jobs through profitable production of food, water, clean electricity and biomass in desert areas.

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The Sahara Forest Project is designed to utilize what we have enough of to produce what we need more of, using deserts, saltwater and CO2 to produce food, water and clean energy. This is done by combining already existing and proven environmental technologies, including saltwater-cooled greenhouses, concentrated solar power (CSP) and technologies for desert revegetation around a saltwater infrastructure. The synergies arising from integrating the technologies improve the performance and economics of the system compared to those of the individual components.

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The name «The Sahara Forest Project» was chosen not only to describe a plan for revegetating parts of the world’s largest desert. In Arabic “Sahara” translates to “desert”, and the Sahara Forest Project is set up to create green growth in desert areas around the world. The Sahara Forest Project enables the growth of plants, but also that of hope and opportunities for people.